| Developer(s) | Tuxera Inc. |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2011.4.12 / April 12, 2011[1] |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Unix-like, Haiku |
| Type | File system driver |
| License | Dual-licensed GNU GPL/Proprietary |
| Website | www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/ |
NTFS-3G is an open source cross-platform implementation of the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system with read-write support. NTFS-3G often uses the FUSE file system interface, so it can run unmodified on many different operating systems. It is runnable on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, BeOS, QNX, WinCE, Nucleus, VxWorks, Haiku,[1] MorphOS, and Mac OS X.[2] It is licensed under either the GNU General Public License or a proprietary license. It is a partial fork of ntfsprogs and is under active maintenance and development.
NTFS-3G was introduced by one of the senior Linux NTFS developers, Szabolcs Szakacsits (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈsɒboltʃ ˈsɒkɒtʃitʃ]), in July 2006. The first stable version was released on 2007-02-21 as version 1.0. The developers of NTFS-3G later formed a company, Tuxera Ltd., to further develop the code. NTFS-3G is now the free "community edition",[1] while Tuxera NTFS is the proprietary version.
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NTFS-3G supports all operations for writing files: files of any size can be created, modified, renamed, moved, or deleted on NTFS partitions. Transparent compression is supported, but there is no support for encryption.[3] Support to modify access control lists and permissions is available.[4] NTFS partitions are mounted using the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) interface.
NTFS-3G supports partial NTFS journaling, so if an unexpected computer failure leaves the file system in an inconsistent state, the volume can be repaired. As of 2009, a volume having an unclean journal file is recovered and mounted by default. The ‘norecover’ mount option can be used to disable this behavior.[5]
Benchmarks show that the driver's performance via FUSE is comparable to that of other filesystems' drivers in-kernel,[6] provided that the CPU is powerful enough. On embedded or old systems, the high processor usage can severely limit performance.[7]. Current versions often show 100% CPU utilization on dealing with big files on fragmented NTFS file systems [8].